Gel Lighting
Coloured filters on lamps as a decision, not an accident: desire, poison and nightlife written directly in hue.
What it does
Gel lighting places coloured filters (CTO, CTB, plus green, primary red, party colours) on lamps so the hue is a decision, not a white-balance accident. Emotionally it can be desire, poison, nightlife, or a mind that has left naturalism. Christopher Doyle's Chungking Express and Fallen Angels treat tungsten, neon and gel as the blood of Hong Kong after dark. Robert Richardson slashes unmotivated gel colour through Natural Born Killers and the Tarantino films until violence has a chromatic temperature. Newton Thomas Sigel's Drive uses neon pinks and cyans so Los Angeles becomes a fable. Use it for nightclubs, dreams, crime, and any city that should feel designed by feeling. Do not gel every unit in a daylight kitchen, and do not confuse a Full Plus Green fluorescent with a look unless the story has earned that sickness.
The prompt
Replace [Subject] with what you are shooting. Everything else is deliberate: the gear, stock and lighting are what push a generator towards this look.
Works well in
Midjourney, Higgsfield, Pika
Pairs with
Unmotivated LightingComplementary Colour Contrast
The Prompt Atlas
Every prompt here is a starting point. The Prompt Atlas is the full system: hundreds of production-ready prompts organised by outcome, with the reasoning behind each one so you can adapt rather than copy.